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More Freedom for DVD Players?

Posted by samzenpus on from the don't-look-now dept.

weopenlatest writes "According to this Wired article, the House just passed a bill allowing DVD players to skip through programming. While the article stressed using this ability for parental controls, it would seem like it would also apply to annoying previews and ads that load automatically. Could this be a step in the right direction towards uncrippled DVD players?"

6 of 404 comments (clear)

  1. Classfication flags by fembots · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Will we be seeing movies with built-in flags, so that parents only need to configure the player to skip [sex(base 1/2/3/4)], [violance(blood 1/2/3/4)] etc, it'll be similar to the rating/parental card on cable TVs except with better, more specific control over the content.

    Parents may be more likely pay a bit more for these "pre-screened" DVDs than using ClearPlay's service - A bite-back from the movie industry?

    --
    Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
    1. Re:Classfication flags by NanoGator · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "The movie industry is fighting this tooth and nail. Something about destroying the directors vision or some junk. Don't expect DVDs to come with this standard."

      Why would that bother them? It would (potentially) mean they can make their vision happen the way they like, and the user can automatically water it down to their tastes. Personally, I don't have a problem with this. If I made a movie that satisfied my vision, and some people wanted to view a worse version of it, fine with me. It beats having to shoe-horn it into a lower rating.

      I'm thinking about Robocop right now. The original cut of it earned an X-Rating for violence. They had to cut scenes out to get it down to R. They made the X-Rated version available on DVD. I watched it, and I couldn't believe what altering it did to some of the scenes. In one case, it actually made a scene a lot scarier. Remember when ED-209 blew away an executive? In the theatrical version, it basically opened fire on him and stopped when he died. It looked very cold-blooded. In the original version, it opened fire and blew the guy onto a table. It then kept firing over and over and over and over again. Despite all the blood spraying into the air, it was actually kind of funny. Stupid thing just kept on firing even though dude was dead. But... the blood. That scene had to go. What was once a humurous scene showing an insanely bad bug (Microsoft, anyone?) turned into a depiction of an evil robot.

      I would imagine that Paul Verhoeven would have much preferred to have been able to release one DVD with user controlled settings.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
  2. You mean like by qurk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I spent a $100 premium on shipping and on the esoteric faster over what guys in Japan would have to pay, now that I have it because I bought it..... Can I actually put it in my DVD player and push play and watch it? Yes I know I am outside of that region. I payed a premium to be able to have it in hands. Can I watch it? Or do I need to buy another DVD player just to not circumvent the laws. What the hell.

  3. Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Raise your hand if you've ever bought or rented DVD with 10+ minutes of unskippable trailers and/or ads at the beginning. It's apparently something they started doing on various new releases, and it pissed me off so much that I stopped renting new releases altogether. I don't bother renting anything made after ~2002 anymore because I got one-too-many that tried to force me to watch a bunch of BS at the beginning (it didn't work -- I took the movies back and traded them in for old releases).

    Imagine the pain when you have to watch a movie in two or three sittings (due to time constraints), and every time you start the movie back up you have to sit through the same goddamn 15 minutes of ads...

    Anyone want to compose a list of new releases to avoid because of unskippable trailers. Here are the two that my family got burned with:

    Stepford Wives (the new one)
    Shrek II

    Anyone have recommendations for new release rentals that *don't* have unskippable trailers? I kinda want to see Hero and House of Hidden Daggers. Anyone know if they have unskippable trailers?

  4. Why was it needed? by Rufus88 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    aimed at allowing your DVD to skip past nude scenes and the like.

    Before the bill, what exactly was prohibiting DVD players from doing this?

  5. ReplayTV's Comercial Advance... by boopus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No one seems to have pointed out that this seems to explicitly legalize Comercial Advance. ReplayTV gave up and stopped skipping comercials automatically as a compromise with the media industry. Hopefully they'll put it back in again.